Set in the year 2223, the thirteen-episode dystopian drama follows the saga of Miss Bookhart, an impossibly devoted—and improbably named—librarian. Earth has been colonized by a race of malevolent beings known as “Wipers,” whose favorite pastime is the destruction of communication technology, especially books. After an unlikely series of events involving a bookmobile and some microfiche, Miss Bookhart finds herself the last human on the planet. She quickly befriends a group of extraterrestrial tweens called “the Users,” and (spoiler alert!) through their collective mastery of library science—from the card catalog to “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” to the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature—they ultimately vanquish the evil Wipers.

By the time I watched it in Ms. Finke’s sixth-grade library class in the early nineties, “Tomes and Talismans” (made in 1985) already seemed dated. As a sophisticated adolescent at the dawn of the grunge era, I of course laughed derisively at this ancient relic of the mid-eighties. “What’s with that feathered hair? And all that canned expository dialogue about the Dewey Decimal System? I’d rather watch ‘Voyage of the Mimi,’ for crying out loud,” I thought to myself while writing Pearl Jam lyrics on my backpack with Wite-Out. But on the inside, I secretly looked forward to each installment of the show, and not just because of the surprisingly catchy “Clockwork Orange”-inspired theme music.

During a recent bout of nostalgic procrastination (the best kind), I discovered that “Tomes and Talismans” had been digitized and uploaded to YouTube in its entirety (thank you, emjameson, whoever you are) and proceeded to watch more of the show than I care to admit publicly. Twenty-five years after it was made, “Tomes and Talismans” still provokes easy laughs: the hair still looks ridiculous, the acting is still wooden, and the talking computer still has a conspicuously Southern accent.

But as dated as “Tomes and Talismans” is in some ways, it’s downright prophetic in others. The Wipers are nothing but a bunch of cyber terrorists (who, if they existed, would probably want to use one of these). Then there’s the fundamental premise of the show, which is that books have been made obsolete. We’re not quite there yet, obviously, but there’s a moment in episode two that stands out as particularly relevant for today’s dead-tree lovers. The plucky girl heroine Abakas—sort of a futuristic Kristy McNichol—is holding a book for the first time and can’t mask her enthusiasm for this unfamiliar object. “The print in these bound paper sheets is readable, just as it is in the display terminal,” she tells her brother, Aphos. “But the words remain affixed to sheets of material. They never disappear. It’s permanent!” Aphos, a real stick in the mud, isn’t so easily impressed. “It’s primitive. These so-called books do not allow for instant information access,” he says, showing off his giant computer.

(Scroll to 2:33 for relevant exchange)

When it comes to educational shows from the eighties, “The Voyage of the Mimi” might have had all the starpower, but “Tomes and Talismans” will always have my (book)heart.